The Woman Suffrage Cookbook: The 1886 Classic

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is a republication of the second edition of The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, Containing Thoroughly Tested and Reliable Recipes for Cooking, Directions for the Care of the Sick, and Practical Suggestions, Contributed Especially for This Work, originally edited and published by Mrs. Hattie A. Burr, Boston, in aid of the Festival and Bazaar, December 18–19, 1886, and Country Store, April 21–26, 1890. The four supplementary recipes have been incorporated into the main text, the Index has been omitted, and all original ads appear at the end.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Burr, Hattie A., author.

Title: The woman suffrage cookbook: the 1886 classic / Hattie A. Burr.

Description: Mineola: Dover Publications, Inc., 2020. | "This Dover edition, first published in 2020, is an unabridged republication of the second edition of The Woman Suffrage Cook Book, Containing Thoroughly Tested and Reliable Recipes for Cooking, Directions for the Care of the Sick, and Practical Suggestions, Contributed Especially for This Work, originally edited and published by Mrs. Hattie A. Burr, Boston, in aid of the Festival and Bazaar, December 18–19, 1886, and Country Store, April 21–26, 1890."

Identifiers: LCCN 2019047921 | ISBN 9780486842783 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Cooking, American. | Cooking for the sick. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX715 .B968 2020 | DDC 641.5973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047921

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

84278901

www.doverpublications.com

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2020

PREFACE

This little volume is sent out with an important mission. It has been carefully prepared, and will prove a practical, reliable authority on cookery, housekeeping, and care of the sick, especially adapted to family use. While many of the receipts are original, it is not claimed that all are so; but each has been thoroughly tested, and is vouched for as reliable by the contributor whose name is appended.

Among the contributors are many who are eminent in their professions as teachers, lecturers, physicians, ministers, and authors—whose names are household words in the land. A book with so unique and notable a list of contributors, vouched for by such undoubted authority, has never before been given to the public.

Grateful acknowledgments are due to the kind friends—many of them in distant homes—who have so willingly contributed of their knowledge and experience for the accomplishment of this undertaking. I believe the great value of these contributions will be fully appreciated, and our messenger will go forth a blessing to housekeepers, and an advocate for the elevation and enfranchisement of woman.

HATTIE A. BURR

BOSTON, NOVEMBER 25, 1886

CONTENTS

Bread and Yeast

Breakfast and Tea Cakes

Eggs and Omelets

Soups

Fish, Oysters, and Clams

Meats

Vegetables and Side Dishes

Salads, Pickles, etc.

Puddings

Pies

Desserts, Creams, etc.

Cakes

Preserved and Canned Fruits, Jellies, etc.

Cooking for, and Care of Invalids

Miscellaneous

The Make-Shifts of Mrs. Orderly Poore

Eminent Opinions on Woman Suffrage

List of Contributors

Ads from the Original 1886 Edition

BREAD AND YEAST

Bread

Boil one pint or one quart of milk, according to the quantity of bread required. Pour it on the flour, and stir with a spoon until of the consistency of what our grandmothers called popped robins. Add cold water, mixing with the hand. When cool enough not to scald the yeast, add a cup, and knead until it will not stick to the board—about half an hour. Let it rise over night. Make into loaves or breakfast biscuit; let it rise again and bake.

MRS. JANE L. PATTERSON

Bread

Dissolve an ounce cake of Fleischmann’s, or some other good compressed yeast, and a teaspoonful of salt, in a quart of lukewarm wetting—either milk, or water, or milk and water in equal proportion—and gradually stir in flour with a wooden spoon until the dough is of sufficient consistency to be turned or lifted from the bowl in a mass. Add flour as desired, until it can be worked without sticking to the molding board or the fingers, then put in a warm earthen bowl, well greased, cover with a bread towel and blanket, and set to rise till light, which, if kept at a temperature of 75°, will be in about three hours. As soon as sufficiently light, form into loaves or rolls, put into greased pans, cover as before, and again set to rise for an hour, or until light, and then bake. The surface of the dough should be lightly brushed with melted butter before it is set to rise, to keep it from becoming dry and hard, and the oven should be at the proper temperature when the bread is put in it, and should be kept so during the entire period of baking. If this recipe is strictly followed, and the yeast and flour are of good quality, it will invariably produce sweet, nutty-flavored, delicious bread and rolls.

MRS. EMMA P. EWING

Brown Bread

Three cups Indian meal, three cups rye meal, one cup molasses, one teaspoonful saleratus; work up with milk about as thick as johnny-cake, butter the steamer, pour in, cook about five hours.

MRS. SARAH R. BOWDITCH

Brown Bread

Two cups of Indian meal, two cups of rye meal, one cup of flour, one large cup of molasses, one teaspoonful of soda. Mix soft with warm water. Steam five hours.

MRS. ZILPHA H. SPOONER

Brown Bread

Two cups yellow corn meal, two cups sifted graham, two-thirds cup molasses, one-half cup raisins, one small teaspoon salt, one teaspoon full of soda; mix very soft, with buttermilk, sour milk, or cold water. Steam four hours, finish in the oven one-half hour. I prefer an earthen dish for the better cooking. A little less soda when water is used.

MRS. J. BLACKMER

Iowa Brown Bread

Ingredients: three cups corn meal, two cups rye meal, three cups sour milk, one cup molasses, one cup raisins, two teaspoons salt, three teaspoons soda. Process: sift the corn and rye meal together. Mix the milk, molasses and salt together. Dissolve the soda in a little warm water. Pour the dissolved soda into the milk and molasses, and, while the mixture is effervescing, pour it into the meal—beating with a wooden spoon until smooth. Grease a pudding-boiler and pour in the batter, a little at a time, adding the raisins in layers, until the mould is filled to within about two inches of the top. Cover closely, place in a kettle of boiling water and cook four or five hours, adding more boiling water as that in the kettle evaporates.

MRS. EMMA P. EWING

Steamed Brown Bread

One quart rye meal, a small pint Indian meal well sifted, three teaspoons Royal Baking Powder stirred thoroughly into the meal, half a cup molasses, two-thirds teaspoon soda dissolved in quite hot water with a piece of butter size of a large walnut. (The soda is for the rye meal and molasses.) Wet the mixture with warm water and milk or clear warm water. Steam in tin or earthen dish six or eight hours. It may be put into the oven half an hour or more to form a crust, if so liked.

MRS. MARY S. TARBELL

Oatmeal or Rice Bread

Two cups cooked oat meal, or rice, salt to taste, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, one cup sweet milk, one-third cup yeast, flour to make it stiff.

S. LOUISE SIMONDS

Raised Bread

Scald one pint of Indian meal with two quarts of boiling water, add as much flour as you can stir in with a spoon, let it set until cool, then add one-half yeast cake dissolved in a cup of warm water, add another cup of warm water, one tablespoonful of salt, one tablespoonful of sugar, and flour enough to knead, but do not make it as stiff as ordinary raised bread. Let it rise over night, then make it into loaves and let it rise again, then bake.

MRS. M. E. SAMMET

Pure Salt Rising Bread

When the kitchen fire is lighted in the morning put a quart cup, one-third full of fresh water, on the range and heat it quickly to 95°. Remove from the fire, add a teaspoonful of salt, a pinch of brown sugar, and coarse flour or middlings sufficient to make a batter of about the right consistency for griddle cakes. Set the cup, with the spoon in it, in a closed vessel half filled with water moderately hot but not scalding. Keep the temperature as nearly even as possible, and add a spoonful of flour once or twice during the process of fermentation. The yeast ought to reach the top of the bowl in about five hours. Dip your flour into a tray or pan, make an opening in the centre and pour in your yeast. Have ready a pitcher of warm milk, salted, or milk and water (not too hot, or you will scald the yeast germs), and stir rapidly into a pulpy mass with a spoon. Cover this sponge closely and keep warm for an hour, then knead into loaves, adding flour to make the proper consistency. Place in warm well-greased pans, cover closely, and leave till it is light. Bake in a steady oven, and when done let all the hot steam escape. Wrap closely in damp towels and keep in closed earthen jars till wanted. There is no sweeter, nicer, better, or more wholesome bread than this; but it takes time, patience and thought to make it. Try it, and be convinced.

ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY

To Make Yeast

Boil four large, pared potatoes in two quarts of water, and strain all through a colander. Stir two heaping tablespoonfuls of flour evenly in a quart of water, and boil it up once or twice. Pour a pint of boiling hot water over a tablespoonful of pressed hops and allow it to stand a few minutes. Now stir together the mashed potato and the liquid in which they were boiled, the flour and water which have been boiled together, and the liquid in which the hops have steeped. Add two tablespoonfuls of sugar and one of salt. Set away to cool until it is lukewarm, so that you can hold your finger in the mixture, then add a cupful of good yeast or one yeast cake. Keep the mixture moderately warm until it rises, as it will in four or six hours. Then cork it tightly in a stone jug, and put it away in the refrigerator or a cool cellar. You will have the best yeast that can be made for family use.

MARY A. LIVERMORE

Yeast

One cup sugar, one half cup salt, pare and grate three or four good-sized potatoes, add two quarts boiling water, and let all boil together five minutes. Steep a pinch of hops in a half-pint of boiling water, and add to the yeast. Set to cool. When blood-warm add a cup of the same kind of yeast—saved from your own or borrowed of your neighbor. Let it rise, then set it in a cool cellar, or refrigerator, and it will keep until used up—a month or six weeks—in perfect sweetness.

JANE L. PATTERSON

Home Made Yeast

Boil a heaping quart of loose hops (or if they are pressed, two ounces) in one gallon of water, strain it, when it is cold put in a small handful of salt, and a half pound of sugar, then take a pound of flour and rub it smooth with some of the liquor, after which make it thin with more of the same liquor, and mix all together, let this stand twenty-four hours; then boil and mash three pounds of potatoes and add to it, let it stand twenty-four hours more; then put it in a bottle or a tight vessel, and it is ready for use. Shake the bottle before using. It should be kept in a warm place while it is making, and in a cool place afterward.

LUCY STONE

Good Hop Yeast

Boil a tablespoonful of hops in a quart of water; grate two pared potatoes in a pan, add two tablespoonfuls of sugar, two of flour, one of salt; stir all together, and then add the strained yeast water; stir briskly over a hot fire till the mixture comes to a boil, then put away to cool; when nearly cold, add a teacupful of yeast; when light and foamy, put in a clean stone jar and cover tightly and keep in a cool place. This will keep several weeks, and will make the most delicious bread.

MRS. SARAH M. PERKINS

BREAKFAST AND TEA CAKES

Breakfast Gems

One cup water, one cup milk, two cups flour; beat from ten to fifteen minutes rapidly with an egg-beater. These will rise like popovers. No salt, the cups of flour not heaped; bake in a quick oven.

MARTHA B. PITMAN

Indian Cake

Sift fresh Indian meal and salt it, moisten with boiling water, beat it well;